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Summer Visit - 2013 - SHIPs

The summer visit to Caltech is 3-4 days long and is the only time during the year of work when all the participants on the team come together in person to work intensively on the data. Generally, each educator may bring up to two students to the summer visit that are paid for by NITARP, and they may raise funds to bring two more. The teams work at Caltech; the summer visit typically includes a half-day tour of JPL, which is a favorite site for group photos. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

The SHIPs team came to visit in June 2013. The core team educators attended, plus 9 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] it .. is such an incredible feeling to be doing real research that matters and to solve an unanswered question. All my life, in every science class I’ve been in, the result of an experiment or project has always been known. I know that if I ask my teacher a question, he or she will know the answer. For the first time in my life, the answer is unknown and I am helping to solve it.
  • [student:] I gain[ed] a whole new level of respect for each person I worked with because we were all treated as equals.
  • [student:] But, I didn't think programming would be such a big part of scientific research, simply because the two are never really associated with one another in science classes at school, so I was happy to discover its importance in the field.
  • [student:] I thought [this visit] would be where we sit in formal rows and someone's at the board showing us what to do as we follow along, but it wasn't that at all. We were given help if we needed, but it was largely "Here's the goal, now go." It was good though because it really forced me to learn what I was doing.
  • [student:] Not only did I gain a great amount of knowledge and experience regarding photometry and computer programming, but I met some great people as well. Everyone there was eager to learn, to teach and to have fun. All of the teachers are great people and were very supportive, and the kids who went are now new friends of mine, and I am very excited to see them all again in January.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2013 - SHIPs